OCZ has announced the introduction of its high-performance Z-Drive SSDs, a new line of PCI Express solid state drives which the company first showcased earlier this year at CeBIT. Available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities, the new offering comprises of up to four 256GB drives set up in a RAID 0 array and housed inside a graphics-card like enclosure, which hooks up to the system via a PCIe x4 link.


The drives are based on MLC NAND flash memory and feature a built-in 256MB cache to help speed things along. For all three models, the sustained write speed is specified at 200MB/s but maximum read and write specs vary depending on their capacity. The 500GB version, for example, is the fastest of the bunch with max read and write speeds rated at 510MB/s and 480MB/s respectively. No prices have been officially announced, but according to listings from a French online retailer, they should cost around €1400, €2200 and €3400.